Letter: Bipartisan citizenship

Edwin Meese was President Ronald Reagan’s attorney general until resigning in 1988 in the face of a special prosecutor investigating his alleged financial improprieties while in office. The special prosecutor’s report outlined his unethical behavior and urged further investigation. He avoided indictment, but officials under him resigned in protest over his actions. His political resume includes disturbing items like the Iran-Contra scandal and two financial/influence scandals, but the most telling portent of his present activities are evident in earlier behavior as Gov. Reagan’s chief of staff in California. He urged the declaration of a state of emergency in Berkeley, against the wishes of the local government, authorizing use of the National Guard to squelch the 1969 protests in Berkeley’s People’s Park, asserting the protesters had to be removed because, “if they were allowed to stay, there would be another mob scene, even bigger, the next day.”

Eight months ago Meese signed off on the strategy forcing the shutdown, published on Feb. 14, just three weeks after the president’s second inauguration. Despite the present end to the shutdown, it’s clear that Meese and those who added their signature to his “Blueprint to Defund Obamacare” are not going away. They did stay and they did create a bigger mob scene every day, precipitating an undeclared state of emergency for our country. They will not stop without our voting out the legislators under their thumb in home primaries or district elections, wherever those take place. This is something Republicans and Democrats can do together: bipartisan citizenship.